Intercontinental GT round at COTA to be cancelled

The proposed round of the new Intercontinental GT Challenge at COTA is set to be cancelled, and the inaugural series will comprise of just three rounds, Motorsport.com has learned.

The round in Austin was originally pencilled in for 5-6 March, but has been shelved after discussions between organising body SRO and the circuit this week.

Motorsport.com has been told that the official reason is the lack of entrants, which is believed to have been exacerbated by the multiple new GT3 designs that have recently come on the market.

The Intercontinental GT Challenge will now run to a three-race schedule made up of the Bathurst 12 Hours next month, the Spa 24 Hours and the Sepang 12 Hours at the end of the year.

Motorsport.com sources in the US have indicated that a race at COTA is currently being worked out for the 2017 edition of Stephane Ratel’s new venture.

Ratel said: “‎Despite interest from a good number of American teams for our proposed event, the difficulty we had to motivate European teams to cross the Atlantic ahead of an extremely competitive Blancpain season, convinced us it was better to postpone the introduction of the American round of the Intercontinental GT Challenge to October 2017, at a time when both American and European teams will have finished their respective seasons and be ready for a Grand GT final.”